On November 7 & 8, 2008, the Berkeley Center for New Media and the Historyof Art department at the University of California, Berkeley will hold asymposium on appropriation rights in the digital era. This event will bringtogether artists, lawyers, art historians, and representatives from theinformation technology community to discuss the changing field ofappropriation art in the wake of the emergence of new digital mediatechnologies that have radically altered access to and manipulation ofinformation. In the United States copyright is now automatic, andregistration with the Copyright Office no longer required. Recent additionsto copyright law such as the Digital Rights Management and the DigitalMillennium Copyright Act (1998) have further extended copyright protectionby criminalizing the creation and dissemination of devices, technologies,and services that assist in circumventing copy protection, even when suchcircumventions do not violate copyright and remain within the shrinkingpurview of 'fair use.' Growing legal debates over file sharing have ensuredthat copyright violation and fair use are firmly entrenched popular topicsin the media. These developments speak to the urgency of readdressing theever-expanding reach of copyright and the limits it subsequently places onour right to critique, comment upon, and parody our culture. Thisconference aims to offer such a reassessment, and will also reconsider thehistory of appropriation in the arts and begin a cross-disciplinarydiscussion about the myriad repercussions of its increasing pervasivenessas a practice for the future.

Appropriation - the act of taking private property and making it over asone's own - is a crucially important, yet increasingly fraught concept incontemporary art and culture. For art historians the term designates anoften critically engaged art practice in which artists glean materials fromcultural artifacts and transform, parody, remix, and recontextualize them.Yet the term has a markedly different status in the legal discourse, inwhich 'appropriation' is virtually indistinguishable from its shadow,'misappropriation.' Indeed, under the law any act of appropriation can beargued to be an infringement of copyright or trademark, while even murkierstrategies of quotation, reference, or influence can be deemed plagiarism.How do restrictions on appropriative acts effect creativity and limitartistic production and attendant forms of social, political, and culturalcritique? What might be the ramifications of constant extensions ofexclusive rights for the public domain? Is the property of large mediacorporations more or less valuable than artistic reinterpretations of theirmaterials? Could appropriation be the price one pays for being culturallyrelevant? Is appropriation an honor or an insult? What can be learned fromart historical instances of appropriation for contemporary practice, andvice versa? How might the terrain in which the legal and art discoursesover appropriation meet be mapped productively? Of note here are the manylegal battles fought over fair use in the music industry, while the artworld has largely stayed out of the fray, leading to a number of mythsabout fair use in the fine arts. Does the knowledge, for example, thatartists such as Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg licensed certain imagesthey reproduced as artworks alter the reception, interpretation, andrelevance of their work? Has the fact that many artists have chosen tosettle their copyright debates behind closed doors rather than in thecourtroom hurt the cause of fair use?

Whether through repurposing found material, re-contextualizing objects forinstitutional critique, re-editing news and commercial television,reenactments of events, hip-hop sampling, open source art, or fan fiction,appropriation has come to define a key set of cultural practices that arereshaping copyright and fair use laws. The intersection of copyright andcreativity creates a complex web of relationships and paradoxes: artistswho freely circulate their work rely on licensing to support themselves,and those who appropriate copyrighted material often go on to copyrighttheir own work and limit its circulation. The digital era has ushered infurther complications, as digital technologies and user-generated contentsites facilitate the easy appropriation and distribution of sourcematerial, in part or wholesale, but severely complicate the legal issuessurrounding these works of art. Creative Commons, for example, hasdeveloped a new form of copyright that allows individuals to opt for lessthan exclusive rights on their creations, so that works can be freelytransformed and disseminated. Websites such as YouTube and Flickr provideoutlets and distribution centers for appropriators and misappropriatorsalike, but are these sites 'safe harbors'? Should they be held responsiblefor the legal infractions (or artistic achievements) of their contributors?In addition to addressing the history, present, and possible future ofappropriation, conference participants will take up its relationship tocurrent debates over digital copyright law, fair use, and mass distributionin on-line environments.

Possible paper topics include, but are not limited to:Critiques of PostproductionCopyright Ambivalence â€" appropriators defending their copyrightsProperty vs. RightReenactmentsCulture Jamming, HacktivismParody vs. SatireCopyright and fixity in dematerialized artSecret histories of licensing in the arts â€" Warhol, Rauschenberg, Levineâ€¦Why artists appropriate now & the stakes of appropriation todayAppropriation and DistributionAppropriation and Exchange ValueConsumerism and the Cultural CommonsAppropriation and MisappropriationUse & MisuseAppropriation on and off the webGuerilla ArtFan Culture

Please send abstracts of no more than 400 words to:takeovermakeovers_at_gmail_dot_com